Friday, September 10, 2010

I have been naked with William Hague

I can't keep this secret any longer. It has to get out. I have been naked, on several occasions, in a room with William Hague, who was also without clothes. Yes, I realise that this latest bombshell will re-ignite the whole two-men-in-a-bedroom scandal, but I can no other. I have to get it off my chest. I know my phone is tapped but I want to sell my story before they do.

And where did this occur? Well, it was in the changing room of the Livingwell Health Club in the Millbank under the BBC where I used to work in the 1990s as a political hack. A lot of MPs used it - some big swinging dicks like the former Tory cabinet minister, Cecil Parkinson. And Labour MPs were there too - all in mutual state of consensual undress. There was, of course, nothing untoward about this. Actually, William Hague used to change into his sports-wear very discretely, unlike the BSDs, who liked to walk around with everything hanging out while they boomed their views on the latest plot against John Major.

Well, if sharing a room with another man is now evidence of homosexuality, where do you draw the line? Just about anything can be made to sound questionable. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and his special adviser, Christopher Myers, spent a night in a twin bedded hotel room during the general election campaign. The result: Mr Myers has lost his job and last week William Hague, pursued by blogosphere rumours about his sexuality, issued a statement denying that he is gay and revealed that his wife, Ffion, had had several miscarriages.

This is barking Will all politicians now have to declare whether or not they have ever slept in a room with a member of their own sex? Will they have to give progress reports on the state of their partner’s uterus? Perhaps they’ll have to register with the parliamentary authorities the frequency of their heterosexual acts, as well as the name, or names, of their sexual partners. Gives a whole new meaning to the Register of Members Interests. It’s like Bill Clinton in reverse: “I did have sexual relations with that woman”.

I suppose I’d better declare here that I spent a night in a hotel room once with the Environment Editor of this paper, Mr Rob Edwards. And there was only one bed! It was during a Labour Party conference in Blackpool a number of years ago. He didn’t have a room so he used my floor. I fully expect Mr Edwards to resign as a result of this shocking revelation. I intend thereafter to make a full statement about the precise date and timing of conception of my three children, and about the frequency with which my I have had sex with my partner.

Seriously. if Mr Hague really had a sexual relationship with Mr Myers - and there’s absolutely no evidence of this - it’s surely none of our business? Since when did politicians have to be heterosexual anyway? Yes, David Laws, the former Treasury Secretary had to resign - but that was because he had foolishly claimed allowances for the cost of his partner’s house, which is against the rules on expenses. He didn’t have to resign over his sexual orienation.

This story began, as many do, on the blogosphere - on the egregious website of Guido Fawkes, aka the former Tory parliamentary candidate, Paul Staines. Nothing wrong with that. No one believes anything they read on the blogosphere. But why did the rest of the ‘quality’ press and astonishingly the BBC make such a big deal of it? It has been on the front pages of both the Guardian and the Telegraph and has led the BBC’s news website. I’m genuinely mystified - and a little concerned. It’s set the gay movement back twenty years and introduced a sinister new way of blackmailing MPs.

I don't care whether Hague is straight or gay, but I do care that his foreign policy has destablised the Middle East and North Africa. His nonsense about an Arab Spring shows a very naïve failure to understand that the people he was supporting were religious bigots. I am glad he is gone.

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About Me

Iain Macwhirter is the award-winning political columnist for the Herald and Sunday Herald. He has been a political broadcaster for over 20 years, in Westminster and Holyrood, and is former Rector of Edinburgh University.